Christin Marshall

“AI on top of a broken process is just going to automate the mess.”

Christin Marshall was employee number 25 at Babylist, part of its first hiring cohort, and today she runs the hiring machinery most people notice only when it breaks. As the Senior Talent Acquisition Specialist who leads TA Ops, she designs the processes, systems and governance that recruiters depend on. Rather than filling roles, she makes filling them possible.

That anonymity comes with the territory. "A lot of what we do is not even known until something doesn't work," she says. "As long as it's all rainbows and unicorns, nobody knows that I'm there."

A Path That Found Her

Talent was never the plan. "I did not choose this path, but this path chose me," Christin says. Colleagues took note of her attention to detail and the care she showed for Babylist's users, and they decided to move her over to talent. She started as a coordinator and worked her way up until she was leading TA Ops.

Along the way, Babylist brought recruiting in-house instead of relying on agencies. In a little over seven and a half years with the company, she has gone from early employee to operations leader, and she is now growing a team of her own, an effort she says is going really well. The trait that first earned her the move, care for the people on the receiving end, turns out to be the same one she now insists must run through every stage of hiring.

Leaders Who Cleared the Way

Rather than single out individuals, Christin points to two groups. The first is Babylist's founder and CEO and its executive team, whom she credits with trusting her and with acting as promoters of scaling rather than blockers. For an operations function, that kind of backing matters.

The second is her peers: fellow TA Ops leaders across the industry. She engages with that community directly, most visibly at RecFest, where she co-facilitated sessions and joined panels alongside other practitioners.

Enthusiasm With Guardrails

Christin is openly passionate about AI. "I love AI so, so much," she says. Babylist is an AI-first company, she explains, and everyone employed there is expected to use it. She leans on it outside work too, letting it help manage her daily routine.

Her enthusiasm comes with a firm line. AI, she says, "shouldn't ever make decisions for people," and "there has to be a human behind making that choice." She places weight on governance and on being able to explain outcomes to candidates. "I'm very big about transparency in AI, where it's used, how we use it, when we don't use it," she says. Babylist records all of its interviews, a practice its recruiters carry out across hundreds of them.

The same discipline shapes how she selects technology. She favors a solid RFP with three to four options on the table, and fit with her team weighs heavily in the final decision.

Care That Runs End to End

For all her optimism about automation, Christin is unequivocal about its limits. "A tool cannot care about a candidate ever," she says. Nor can care be an afterthought. "You don't sprinkle that care on right at the end, like you're garnishing the plate after you made it," she explains. "You care end to end."

In practice, that means taking waiting seriously. She calls it probably the most stressful part of a candidate journey, which is why she champions service level agreements and timely communication. Her rule is simple: even when there is no news, candidates should still get an update. She contrasts that with a pattern she considers a terrible experience, such as a company that reaches five months into a search and only then bulk rejects the other 1,500 applicants. The human side of hiring is a theme she speaks on consistently, across a range of venues.

Advice for 2027

Christin's guidance for talent leaders starts with fundamentals: make sure processes are very structured and fairly firm. Technology comes second. "AI on top of a broken process is just going to automate the mess, so get that process straight before you even try it," she says.

It is a standard well suited to an operations leader whose best days pass unnoticed. When the process holds, nobody has a reason to go looking for the person who designed it.